Zero to One product - A dev’s POV

During my initial months at HackerRank, I worked on the core product and enjoyed it, but it wasn't as turbulent or fast-paced as I had imagined a startup would be. HackerRank is a 12+ years old mature company with resilient systems in place, and the development is meticulous rather than erratic. So, I didn't get the taste of working in an 'early' stage startup during the initial months, which was highly romanticized and hyped up in my mind.

That changed soon when I joined a team that was working on new products from scratch. I completed one year working in this team a few weeks back and thought about writing down my takeaways, segregated as pros and cons of working on a 0-1 project.

Pros

Learning

This is the most cliche point, but I have something to add to this. 0-to-1 products by design will have a steeper and more stimulating learning curve which in itself is a huge pro, but you can make it more exciting if you want.

You can leverage the fact that you would own a few features end-to-end. For example, if you come across a new design pattern, you can implement it in one of your features. Over time, you would get real-world feedback as the feature is updated, integrated with other elements, or other devs in the team interact with your code. This feedback will give you more food for thought than reading 10-20 blog posts on that design pattern.

You get to work on non-dev-related things.

Some might see this as a con, but it's a pro for me. I am someone who appreciates good design but cannot design myself. I enjoy a good user experience but am very bad at product management. As a developer, if you want to get a bit better at these things, a 0-1 product is the best place to be. You will find yourself thinking hard about a product problem, and when you discuss your solution/findings with the product manager, the crisp and elegant advice they give will stick with you for a long time.

You get to observe the customer feedback in its rawest form

Unlike big projects, the custom feedback does not go through filters like CSMs, and PMs before reaching you.

Cons

High feature churn

The feature that you had worked on might be removed or changed significantly.

Accumulation of tech debt

The tech debt is worked on only when it's felt that it's hindering the project's velocity. E.g., the test coverage will be abysmal as only the critical pieces of the code will be covered.

Ambiguous tasks

A few times, you don't have all the information and clarity on the end state of a feature you are working on.

Happy ending is not insured

There is no guarantee that the project you are working on will reach a product market fit.

For me, the pros heavily outweigh the cons.